The Gravedigger's Son - Darynda Jones Page 0,2

new day. Amber shook out of her thoughts and gave her messy studio a quick spruce, picking up cast-off articles of clothing, straightening books, and carrying a couple of cups to the kitchen. Then she turned back for a final inspection. The studio above her office wasn’t much, but it was hers, and that was saying a lot in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

She popped the lid on her travel mug and turned to Kyle. “Okay, let’s meet Mrs. Rodriguez, shall we?”

Chapter Two

Welcome to Madrid

Madrid has no town drunk.

We all take turns.

—Welcome sign

It was a risk, coming back to New Mexico after so many years away, but the demon Quentin Rutherford was tracking didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass. Based on news stories, eyewitness accounts, and the compass, a weapon the Vatican guard had given him, the asshole he’d been tracking for a month had set up shop in the small town of Madrid. Which was weird.

The town was a seat of mystical energy. It sat between Albuquerque and Santa Fe on a stretch of road called the Turquoise Trail. It was an old mining town turned ghost town turned hippie commune turned popular art colony. When he arrived, Quentin’s skin fairly tingled with the energies swirling about the place. Like the wind before a dirt storm in the desert, hot and full of static electricity.

Still, last he’d heard, Amber was in New York. She’d gone to college there, a fancy one named Vassar. He didn’t know much about colleges other than the one he attended for a whole year: Gallaudet University in Washington DC. He was there when all of his troubles began.

Well, more of the same troubles, but things escalated rapidly one fateful weekend, and his life had never been the same. His relationship with the elfin queen—his descriptor—had never been the same. The fact that he thought about her every day, craved her every day, meant nothing. He’d hurt her. Physically. Emotionally. Psychologically. There was no going back. And in all the years since, in all the towns and all the bars and all the women, he’d never met anyone who compared to the ethereal creature known as Amber Kowalski.

Ethereal. That was his new favorite word. He’d written it down in his notebook like he did all of the English words he wanted to remember. English was bothersome and clunky and didn’t make sense, but that word sounded pretty. And the sign for it was almost as beautiful as Amber was. A befitting tribute to all that she was. All that she is.

“If you don’t stop thinking about her, you’re going to get us killed.”

Quentin shook out of his thoughts, mentally flipped off the entity hitching a ride, and pulled his pickup off the main road that snaked through the tiny town. Madrid was a paradise for the chaotic-minded and a nightmare for anyone with OCD. Quentin leaned toward the latter. The town made him uncomfortable. Like his skin didn’t fit right. And yet, the hodge-podge of mismatched buildings and displays was somehow alluring.

Brightly colored buildings dotted a sparse landscape. Most of the houses in town had been built for the miners in the twenties and thirties. They were small and tightly packed. The artists had transformed the town into a multi-colored expression of pageantry and wonder, like Alice in Wonderland.

Artisans traded their wares, but Quentin mostly cared about food—he was hungry—and the dead people—of which there were now three. Three dead people in less than a week in a town of two hundred? Barring a major accident, a plague, or a serial killer, it wasn’t likely. Not in Madrid, pronounced Mad-rid, according to his source. This had to be the demon’s latest stop. The demon he’d been tracking for a month. He kept missing the otherworldly being by a day or two. Hours even. Every time Quentin got to a hotspot, at least two people were dead, and the demon was gone.

And the activity was all over the place. The compass verified what Quentin and his guest already knew. The demon showed up, killed a few people, then left. To say that the activity was unusual would be an understatement. Demons craved stability. They possessed for a reason. They wanted to set up shop, kick off their shoes, and stay awhile.

Then there were those who would tear a straight path through a given area, leaving trauma and carnage in their wake. Again, this one didn’t do that. It would be in New Jersey one day, Oregon